Good writing as it paints Trump’s supporters as human beings, fragile and hurt by the pain that life brings, and many, but not all, in need of hope incarnate.
Sure hope takes many forms and can offer relief to the afflicted — like proffering unifying enemies to hate but Donald Trump is not hope incarnate.
He is not bringing light to the darkness.
Rather, as Daniel infers, Trump is a prophet bringing darkness to the light along the likes of an Elmer Gantry or Billy Graham, wrapped up in an American flag using Vince McMahon’s bombastic style — all to offer a kind of shallow hope to the ‘bungled and the botched’, the kind of cyanide hope that often goes with a demagogue.
Trump’s supporters should not be scorned nor bullied nor yelled at. They should not be attacked, as that only strengthens them while degrading those opposed to him. They should be protected from violent anti-Trump protesters. You know, who’s looking like the Brownshirts when the single pro-Trumper is attacked?
Many of Trump’s supporters should also be pitied for they have taken holy communion from a charlatan who while promising salvation is emptying their pockets, who while promising to champion them against those who would continue to garner more and more wealth unto themselves, is making both them and himself richer and who, while pointing out his enemies with childish epithets and bullying lies through an effective propaganda machine, is rendering his flock senseless.
And rending America from itself in the process.
It’s almost as if Trump is dying to say ‘sic him!’ That’s right, her too…sic her! Now who’s a good boy?”
All because Trump makes them feel that they belong to something bigger, something more powerful than any of those who rule over them or have disenfranchised them or silenced their voices.
In other words, it was a broken system with little hope that drove them into his monstrous open arms…Trump is just playing the system as he always has and by not paying attention, he has them now.
And that is very very dangerous.
Lastly, I appreciate the irony and metaphor that all of this happened so close to the last vestiges of the dying American Dream, Disneyland.
How apt, how pathetic and ultimately how tragic.